Earlier today World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reported that Aaron Sorkin‘s Being the Ricardos was research-screened last night, and that Javier Bardem‘s performance as Desi Arnaz is the big stand-out.

Two who attended have told Ruimy that “the audience absolutely ate up his performance.” So that’s it — Bardem will be nominated for either Best Actor or Supporting Actor…whatever seems like the right strategy.

I haven’t read Sorkin’s script, but the big challenge of the marriage between Desi and Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) was Desi catting around.

Ruimy: “This is another glossy film from Sorkin, a very slick affair that is meant to be seen by as wide an audience as possible. The person I spoke to compared it to the straightforward style of Bombshell.

“Those who attended the screening last night were told not to post any thoughts on social media about the film until January 2022.”

The famous chocolate factory scene is another standout element, Ruimy reports.

The below photo is from a People page / credit: BACKGRID.

Hollywood Elsewhere will be attending CinemaCon in Las Vegas for…well, probably all four days but let’s take it one day at a time. The plan is to drive up on early Monday morning, collect the pass, attend the evening show, ask questions, take notes, etc.

In his latest (7.19) column, What I’m Hearing‘s Matt Belloni has called CinemaCon “CovidCon” — a nasty remark. Yes, the general culture of Caesar’s Palace (Las Vegas being more of a Trumpian than a Bidenesque realm) is concerning, but I’m going with the idea that I’m double-vaxxed and strong of constitution** to begin with.

Speaking of Covid concerns I have to make sure to get a PCR test (which I’m naturally assuming will be be negative) conducted within 72 hours of arrival in Telluride.

Belloni: “Depressed yet? At least you’re not attending CovidCon — er, CinemaCon — the annual theater owners convention, which, amazingly, is still happening next week at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas—albeit without the stars and media stunts that usually generate headlines.

“I’ve always found CinemaCon amusing, and not just because I enjoy perusing the large ‘concessions’ ballroom displaying the latest bizarre flavors of Icee and nacho cheese.

“What’s funny is that while Hollywood is so often painted as the exclusive province of out-of-touch, bicoastal liberals, the people who actually sell movie tickets are Red State exhibition executives based in places like Kansas (AMC Theaters), Tennessee (Regal Cinemas), and Texas (Cinemark).

“In short, CinemaCon is a steakhouse owner’s dream. I once played blackjack next to a mid-level exec based in Knoxville who tried to get me to explain why the #OscarsSoWhite movement was, you know, ‘a thing.’ The loudest ovation I heard was in 2015, when Tom Cruise showed up to unveil that Mission Impossible stunt where he hangs off the side of a plane. You get the point.”

Bill Maher to Vox‘s Sean Illing: “The word problematic, to me, is problematic…I don’t like that word, those weasel words…problematic is such a cheap way to be enlightened. They’re scared, cowed…they’re afraid of being cancelled.

“It’s not ‘a lot of people on the left’ who don’t like me…it’s the loudest people on the left. The progressophobes. [Because] in their world there’s only one true opinion. Who’s on Twitter? The crybullies…a bunch of pussies. They only want to stay in their silos, and be reconfirmed. They think not being offended is much more important than free speech.

“The right is playing with a kind of fire that even they haven’t played with before. Woke, to me, is an offshoot of liberalism that bastardized liberalism. The way, sometimes, that happens with sects in religions. [Wokeness] inverts liberalism in so many ways. Liberalism, for example, was about achieving a color-blind society. Wokeness seems to be about always seeing race everywhere.

“Those kids, who grew up spoiled and entitled and coddled — they can’t stand one second of something being uncomfortable. This is where you get trigger warnings and stuff like that.

“Anything I would want to say on Twitter, I can’t say on Twitter. So what’s the point of it?”

“You wind up with this world where everyone is like the press spokesperson for the President — watching every word so carefully, walking on eggshells. No wonder why people turn against Democratic politicians who don’t stand up against that.”

TheWrap: “Directed by Mike Mills (Beginners, 20th Century Women), C’mon C’mon will have its New York premiere at NYFF59.

“Joaquin Phoenix plays a soulful, kindhearted radio journalist deep into a project in which he interviews children across the U.S. about the world’s uncertain future. The film finds him connecting to his 8-year-old nephew (Woody Norman), who’s suffering from mental health issues, and taking him on a cross-country journey. Costarring Gaby Hoffmann and Jaboukie Young-White, pic will be released by A24.

I’m hearing “black-and-white road trip movie…moody, very arty, very euro, tons of voiceover.” Mills allegedly interrupts the narrative from time to time with docu-style interviews, kids talking about life, etc.

The term “gritty ’70s crime film” and Ulu Grosbard and Dustin Hoffman‘s Straight Time (’78) are a pretty good match. Co-written by Alvin Sargent, Edward Bunker and Jeffrey Boam (with uncredited script assistance from Michael Mann), I think it may be the best acted, the most insightful and certainly the most realistic drama about a low-life criminal ever made.

Hoffman directed one day’s worth of shooting, and then Grosbard was hired to direct the remainder. Hoffman later claimed that only the first 20 minutes’ worth represents his vision of the material.

Hoffman plays a hard-core felon, Max Dembo, just released from a six-year stretch in the slam. The film is mainly about his difficulties with a goading, mind-fucking parole officer (M. Emmet Walsh) and his fraternizing with two ex-con pals (Harry M. Stanton, Gary Busey) who eventually nudge him back to a life of crime. Theresa Russell is first-rate as the average, solemn-faced girl whom Dembo hooks up with.

Alas, Straight Time opened under conflicted circumstances on 3.17.78. Hoffman made the low-budget drama with the understanding that he would have creative control provided the film did not go over budget and schedule. First Artists chairman Phil Feldman claimed that it did go over budget, and the film was taken away from Hoffman. Straight Time was well reviewed but didn’t do a lot of business.

Roughly 29 years later it was released on DVD (May 2007), and an HD version is streaming we speak. I just re-watched the HD streaming version last night, and for an average film shot in regular 35mm I can’t imagine it looking much better. I don’t know why Warner Archive waited all this time to release a Bluray disc version, but they’re finally doing so on 9.21.21.

Jenny Mercer (Theresa Russell): What happened. Where’ve you been?
Max Dembo (Dustin Hoffman): Had to take care of some business.
Mercer: What kind of business? Why are you all dirty?
Dembo: I broke through a wall.
Mercer: Why?
Dembo: To get something. (looks around, walks around) Place looks nice. What made you finally decide to unpack? (pause) How far you wanna take this? Huh?
Mercer: I don’t know. Thought we were workin’ on somethin’ here. Maybe I was wrong.
Dembo: No, you’re not wrong but whadaya think I been doin’? You want me to lie, say I’m workin’ at a hot dog stand? You know I can’t work a regular job. I can’t sit here and take your money. You have an alternative for me? I’m doin’ what I do. If you’re tellin’ me you can’t take it, you’re tellin’ me it’s too heavy for you then I’ll just walk out the door. I’ll walk but I don’t want to.
Mercer: Well, is this a one-time thing or what?
Dembo: That depends on how lucky I get.

So Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch (Searchlight, 10.22) will have its big stateside debut at the 2021 New York Film Festival. Which means, of course, that it won’t be at the 2021 Telluride or Toronto gatherings. The latter festival, I’m told, really went the extra mile to try and persuade Anderson and Searchlight to have the big North American premiere in Toronto, but all for naught.

Why exactly? Because Toronto is generally regarded as a shit-show these days. They don’t know what they’re doing, and, like Sundance, they’ve safe-spaced and woked themselves into a corner.

Who opens a festival with a serving of musical snowflake pablum like Dear Evan Hansen with a 28 year-old “teenager” who looks like he’s 33? Some films still want to buddy up with Toronto for promotional purposes and that’s fine, but the Toronto Film Festival’s heyday (late ’90s to late teens) has come to an end. Toronto needs an official second-class seal attached to its logo. Let’s all get together and cut Toronto out of the action…seriously!

This is pure speculation but did TIFF reject Paul Schrader‘s The Card Counter because his Facebook posts have been too boomerish?

I adore the fact that Toronto is floundering, taking hits, missing out, experiencing behind-the-scenes chaos, etc.

The only biggies that Telluride missed out on are The French Dispatch and The Tragedy of Macbeth. I’m presuming they rejected Dune, and who wouldn’t?

Right now TIFF is basically suggesting that press people should stay home and watch everything digitally. A friend recently emailed them about covering the fest in-person and the press office was quite literally trying to convince him to cover it remotely and watch the films at home digitally. 

Last month a Toronto veteran was shaking his head about TIFF opening with Dear Evan Hansen, which seems weak and inconsequential even by the standards of a weak and inconsequential festival. The days when TIFF was an essential stopover — a big, muscular, must-attend, launch-of-awards-season festival — are over, and that is an excellent thing, trust me. They seem so uncertain, so off-balance, so anxious an∂ even puzzled. The world belongs to Venice, Telluride, New York, Berlin and Cannes now. Toronto is strictly second-tier.

The initial Eternals teaser used Skeeter Davis‘s “The End of the World” as a background track, and now, in the new trailer, they’ve got Lia McHugh‘s “Sprite” saying “this is what the end of the world looks like…at least we have front-row seats.”

I’m not adopting the posture of some drooling, wild-eyed fanatic by claiming that The Eternals and the whole mythological Marvel branding machine of the last 13 years is the end of the moviegoing world as many of us have known it, but the Marvel virus has absolutely infected the realm. It is box-office manna but otherwise cancer…chemical sugar highs for pigs at the trough.

HE to all human beings and to God Herself: As payback and cure and an act of salvation it is the solemn responsibility of each and every serious film lover to band together and do what we can to turn The Eternals into another box-office shortfaller…to make it into another The Suicide Squad…to bring about a less impressive performance than Black Widow. Let’s all band together and punch a hole in the balloon…let’s send a message to Kevin Feige (who came from the same leafy New Jersey town that I went to school and suffered in for so many years)…”nothing lasts forever, friendo!”

I first heard of Sonny Chiba, the recently deceased martial arts superstar, in the early fall of ’93. It was during my first viewing of Tony Scott and Quentin Tarantino‘s True Romance, and specifically a scene in which Christian Slater‘s “Clarence Worley” praises Chiba for being the greatest martial arts actor in the world.

If Worley hadn’t delivered that ringing endorsement, I would’ve never heard of Chiba. In the 28 years since that first viewing, have I watched a single Chiba film? Have I watched any martial-arts films apart from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon over the span of my entire life? Due respect but not a one — donut.** And I’m completely cool with that.

Due respect to Chiba all the same, and condolences to his friends, family, fans and colleagues. The 82 year-old performer died from Covid-19.

** Yojimbo, Sanjuro, The Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress don’t count.